During the 1980's the city of London experienced a chess renaissance that made it the premier chess capital of the West. The culmination of this activity was to host the first half of the World Championship Centenary Match in 1986. The other events that helped London achieve this status included the Second USSR vs The Rest Of The World Match in 1984 and a series of tournaments sponsored by the stock-broking firm Phillips & Drew ( See Game Collection: London Phillips & Drew 1980 and Game Collection: Phillips & Drew Kings Chess Tournament 1982 also ).
This 1984 tournament was a fourteen player category 14 event and was sponsored by both Phillips & Drew and the Greater London Council. It was also the first ever all GM tournament to be held in the United Kingdom. It ran from the 26th of April to the 11th of May and was held in the County Hall, London.
Rounds took place on the dates given below with rest days on the 30th of April and the 4th and 10th of May.

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Thanks to <Tabanus> and <Chessical> for finding the dates on which the rounds took place.

This tournament played in New Zealand was the second leg of the Asian Grandmasters circuit. The circuit was the brain-child of then FIDE Deputy President Florencio Campomanes to help Asian area players gain experience and title norms. The first leg was held in Baguio City in the Philippines, the third leg in Jakarta, Indonesia and the fourth leg was hosted in Penang, Malaysia. Australia was originally given the option of hosting the second leg but when this lapsed the New Zealand Chess Association gave Murray Chandler the green light to organize the tournament in Wellington. Months were spent by Chandler and his assistant Jenny McLaren in raising funds, arranging players' accommodation and finding both the playing venue and the personnel to run the tournament. The sponsorship problem was solved when Burroughs Computers agreed to very generously contribute towards the tournament expenses. The tournament was suppose to feature grandmasters Eugenio Torre , Miguel A Quinteros and Alberic O'Kelly de Galway. However, the last named player failed to arrive. Running from the 5th to the 19th of April 1978 it was held in the World Trade Centre in Wellington.

Following the foundation of the International Correspondence Chess Union ( IFSB )* in Berlin on the 2nd of December 1928 the idea of a Correspondence Chess Championship was discussed for the first time. Alexander Alyekhin who had played numerous games of correspondence chess in his youth held it in high regard and became a driving force to see the realization of a Correspondence Championship. In August 1936 an IFSB conference resolved to set up a committee to work out a draft of Alyekhin's ideas and bring them to fruition. A year later in August 1937 at another IFSB conference in Stockholm a resolution to create and regularly hold a Correspondence Championship was reached. Amongst those present at this conference were FIDE President Dr Alexander Rueb and Dr Max Euwe. The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 delayed plans but eventually in 1947 the preliminaries for the World Correspodence Championship started. There were 78 participants from 22 countries in 11 preliminary groups. This lead to a Final Tournament of 15 players. Play for this final commenced in 1950 with the games finishing in 1953.

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* The IFSB was the predecessor of the International Correspondence Chess Federation ( I.C.C.F ).

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The Final Standings were :

1st C J S Purdy 10½ points ( +9, =3, -1 );

2nd= H Malmgren 10 points ( +7, =6, -0 );

2nd= M Napolitano 10 points ( +10, =0, -3 );

4th O Barda 9½ points ( +9, =1, -3 );

5th= G R Mitchell 7 points ( +5, =4, -4 );

5th= L Watzl 7 points ( +5, =4, -4 );

7th= E Adam 6 points ( +5, =2, -6 );

7th= G Wood 6 points ( +5, =2, -6 );

9th T D van Scheltinga 5½ points ( +2, =7, -4 );

10th J Balogh 5 points ( +3, =4, -6 );

11th S Madsen 4½ points ( +2, =5, -6 );

12th J W Collins 4 points ( +2, =4, -7 );

13th= P van't Veer 3 points ( +2, =2, -9 );

13th= A Cuadrado 3 points ( +0, =6, -7 ).

Adolphe Viaud withdrew part way through the tournament and all his games were cancelled. However, those which had reached a fairly advanced stage were preserved by his opponents and are included in this collection.

For this 2nd final ( taking place from 1956 - 1959 ) the top three players in the 1st final ( the 1950 - 1953 contest ) were seeded into it but only Dr Mario Napolitano took up his free place. The rest of the field was selected by elimination in 10 preliminary groups of 7 players each. In Preliminary Group H, V Bergraser won the group on tie-break ahead of L Schmid, but Schmid was admitted into the final after H Malmgren had decided against taking up his seeded position. Preliminary Group A had a three-way tie with J Balogh, F Batik and B Koch. The Tournament director Larsson suspected this may have been engineered. According to the rules he may have promoted only Balogh because he had the most wins with Black. However, he eventually permitted all three players into the final. After the preliminary contests began the Soviet Union joined the I.C.C.F. ( International Correspondence Chess Federation ) and were granted a place in the 2nd final. Their nominee was V V Ragozin.

a) The first three living players from Final 1. Harald Malmgren had passed away so invitations were sent to C J S Purdy, Dr Mario Napolitano and Olaf Barda.

b) The first six players in Final 2.

c) Dr J Balogh, who had qualified for both the earlier Finals.

d) The selected representatives of the five I.C.C.F. zones.

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The invitations were sent out in 1958. Purdy and Barda from the first final and Arnlind, Ragozin and Schmid from the second final declined to play so the third final became the smallest of the World Correspondence Championship finals.

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The qualifiers from the second final who accepted were Endzelins, Kjellander and Lundqvist.

The 85th New Zealand Championship congress took place from the 27th of December 1977 to the 8th of January 1978. It was hosted by the Civic Chess Club at the YWCA in Wellington and sponsored by Windy Music a local private radio station. The prize fund attracted a strong field that included Ortvin Sarapu, Murray Chandler, Paul Garbett, Vernon Small, Philip Clemance, Ewen Green, Bruce Anderson, Kai Jensen, Peter Stuart, Craig Laird, Robert Smith and Roger Perry.

The final result produced a surprise winner in the form of Craig Laird and although he may have had a share of luck his win was fully deserved.

The games in this wonderful book by Kevin Casey which is published by Kimberley Publications showcase some of the finest play by a number of great Australian players. Getting hold of a copy is highly recommended. ISBN 978 0 9806340 0 6

In November 1938 a Dutch radio company AVRO (Algemeene Vereeniging voor Radio Omroep) organized and sponsored what was up to that time the strongest tournament ever held.
AVRO (literally the General Association for Radio Broadcasting) brought together the World Champion and every one of his major challengers. It ran from the 6th of November to the 27th of November 1938 with the players based in Amsterdam and each successive round played in a different Dutch town.
This tournament schedule proved to be tough for the older competitors and Capablanca and Alyekhin did not fare as well as might have been expected. In the end Keres and Fine finished in joint first place with Keres declared the winner as a result of a better tie-break score.

For a number of years following the First World War Germany had seen no great international tournaments. Indeed the last such event of this type was Mannheim 1914 (See Game Collection: Mannheim 1914 - the unfinished tournament) which the outbreak of the war had brought to a premature conclusion.
Lamenting this sad state of affairs Dr Tarrasch approached the municipal authorities of the famous old Spa-town of Baden Baden which had been the site of an international tournament in 1870 (See Game Collection: Baden-Baden 1870). Their response was favourable and the organisation of the event was placed in the good doctor's hands. Most of the invitees accepted but both Dr Lasker and Capablanca insisted on large appearance fees which were unable to be met. Other absentees were Vidmar and Maroczy who were unable to attend because of work commitments.
The final entry consisted of twenty-one competitors including Dr Tarrasch himself and the tournament ran from the 15th of April to the 14th of May 1925.
The final result was a great win for Alyekhin and foreshadowed his later triumphs at San Remo 1930 (See Game Collection: San Remo 1930) and Bled 1931 (See Game Collection: Bled 1931).

Milan Vidmar was the instigator of the major chess tournament that became Bled 1931. His idea was well received in both Ljubljana ( his birthplace ) and the nearby health resort of Bled. An organizing committee was set up and at the end of July 1931 and following the Chess Olympiad in Prague this committee commissioned Hans Kmoch to conduct the negotiations with the competitors for a double round tournament to be held at Lake Bled.

Most of those players approached gave their agreement but Max Euwe declined because of work commitments, Mir Sultan Khan was due to play in the British Championships and Akiba Rubinstein asked for a printed programme. This was sent to him and he was given until August 16th to either confirm or decline the invitation but when this deadline expired without any reply his place was offered to Gosta Stoltz. Stoltz immediately cabled his acceptance but later that day a cable confirming his acceptance arrived from Rubinstein. The tournament committee ruled that the offer to Stoltz should stand and thus Rubinstein was forced to bow out.

The players stayed at the Hotel Toplice and it was here that most of the tournament except Round 19 ( held in Ljubljana ) took place.
The first round was held in a large hall but the spectators made such a noise and disturbance that all the subsequent rounds were played in a smaller room in a much more controlled atmosphere which overlooked Lake Bled. The tournament opened on the 22nd of August with the opening banquet and the drawing of lots and ran until the 29th of September 1931.

The rate of play was 35 moves in 2½ hours. Play commenced daily at 9:00am until 2:00pm and then there was a break for a meal. After this at 4:30pm play was resumed for another two hours with a control rate of 15 moves per hour.

Alyekhin registered one of his greatest triumphs by out distancing the rest of the field by a whopping 5½ points.

The small town of Bugojno in central Yugoslavia ( now Bosnia ) hosted five strong tournaments between 1978 and 1986. ( See Game Collection: Bugojno 1980 , Game Collection: Bugojno 1982 , Game Collection: Bugojno 1984 and Game Collection: Bugojno 1986 for the others ). However, this tournament was the first one. It was a category 14 event that featured players of the old guard like Gligoric, Ivkov and Byrne and pitted them against a younger generation that included Timman, Miles and Huebner. The tournament ran from the 26th of February to the 16th of March and in the sixteen player field Karpov and Spassky emerged as the joint winners. For Spassky it was a victory to rank alongside wins such as the 29th USSR Championship in 1961, the Zonal Tournament of Seven in Moscow 1964 and the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup. For Karpov it was an excellent dress rehearsal in his only other showing in 1978 before facing Korchnoi to defend the World Title in September.

This is a collection dedicated to some of the best games that have ever been played. Many are well known but some are not. Whilst there may be some omissions and some are a matter of taste, all have something memorable and interesting about them.

The name 'Fencible' is derived from the word defensible. Retired soldiers mostly from Ireland and the midlands of England were encouraged to become members of the Royal New Zealand Fencible Corps. Those who signed up would get a new life in New Zealand and were offered free passage together with their families as well as a cottage and an acre of land to become theirs after a seven year term. For this they were expected to perform certain military duties including compulsory Sunday Church parade. The Fencible scheme was the largest Government funded early immigration scheme for Auckland. From 1847 to 1852 ten ships brought the Fencibles to Auckland where they founded the villages (now suburbs) of Howick, Panmure, Otahuhu and Onehunga. Many of their descendants still live in these areas today.

In 1963 famous cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and his wife Jaqueline gave a cup through the Piatigorsky Foundation for a chess tournament that would include two grandmasters from the USSR and two grandmasters from the USA. Four grandmasters from other countries filled out the playing list. The final player line-up consisted of Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian, Paul Keres, Samuel Reshevsky, Pal Benko, Fridrik Olafsson, Svetozar Gligoric, Oscar Panno and Miguel Najdorf. The tournament ran from the 2nd of July to the 30th of July 1963 in Los Angeles, USA. The players met in a double round all-play-all and the joint winners Petrosian and Keres returned to the Soviet Union with more than half of the $10,000 prize fund offered by the Piatigorsky Foundation. This tournament was the strongest to be held in the USA after New York 1927

This book of his own games by fifth World Champion Max Euwe was first published in Great Britain in 1938 by G Bell and has recently been republished as My Best Games, 1920 - 1937 by Hardinge Simpole Publishing
ISBN 1 84382 083 8

This book followed his previous work "Grandmaster Preparation" and in it Soviet Grandmaster Lev Polugaevsky (1934 - 1995) presents sixty-four of his best games.

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From the Author

Some 30 years ago, when I was still a boy, I was given some advice by one of the oldest Soviet masters, one of Alexander Alekhine's fellow players back in the 1909 St Petersburg Tournament, Pyotr Romanovsky. "If you want to play well", he said, "in the first instance study games. Your own and other peoples'. Examine them from the viewpoint of the middlegame and the endgame, and only then from the viewpoint of the opening. This is more important than studying textbooks".
Perhaps such advice is not indisputable, perhaps it will not appeal to everyone, but I accepted and have followed this recommendation all of my life. Of course, on becoming a master, and then a grandmaster, I had to make a detailed acquaintance with opening monographs and with endgame guides, but nevertheless the analysis of games still remains for me the most important thing. To a great extent, this is why I am now offering this collection of my own games, played over nearly a third of a century.
They have been selected such that the reader should obtain as clear an impression as possible of what promises victory in chess. This is a fundamental knowledge of the openings (even if not all, but only certain ones), a mastery of the skills of attack and defence, and an ability to form a strategic plan. (The following aphorism is after all true : "It is better to follow a bad plan, than to play without any plan at all".) This is the ability to play endgames, and the ability to play in critical situations, which is acquiring greater and greater significance : psychology today is the key to the solving of many problems, including those associated with chess.
But I hope that the reader will take note of, evaluate, and arm himself with the main message of the book : at whatever stage of the game the victory was gained, by whatever means it was achieved, it was always as a result of effort. Always great, and sometimes enormous. The author is firmly convinced that without this it is impossible today to mount even half the steps of the chess staircase, leading upwards.
I consider myself to have been fairly fortunate in chess. I have scored victories in many major tournaments, and have more than once been a Candidate for the World Championship. But the greatest joy in this field of my life has nevertheless been gained from individual, quite specific games. When everything succeeds, and victory is gained, these are the happiest moments in the life of any chess player.
To all readers of this book, I should like to wish as much happiness of this type as possible.

Soviet Grandmaster Alexander Kotov (1913 - 1981) was a top ranking player and a World famous chess author.

This is a collection of full gamescores and positions from some of his best games.

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From the Author

Is Chess an art or a sport? This is a question which has been debated right up to the present day. Those who consider chess only a sport forget one important detail - the chess game. Master games, played dozens of years ago and recorded in books and magazines, are capable, many years later, of arousing a whole torrent of feelings, and this places them alongside the best productions of other kinds of art.
Being the embodiment of the wills of two battling sides, their inventiveness, schemes, imagination, chess games can later pass on the many refind thoughts and feelings of those who played them. The reader, analysing the games of the masters, experiences a great deal: this includes joy from beautiful moves, astonishment and delight at suprising schemes, disappointment from missed opportunities. It is perhaps only tears which are not aroused by the chess game. The fact that chess player's creative work awakens a range of feelings in the reader is best characterised by the enormous element of the art in chess. The principal quality of it is supplemented by the necessary sporting element.
It can only be welcomed that the best games of the masters are preserved. These find their way into magazines, special bulletins and tournament books. A particular and very important role is played by a collection of the best games of this or that master. In this, the reader, besides general chess values, will in addition find the characteristics of the chessplayer in question, making it possible to understand his creative and sporting features. Each master has his own way, a unique inherent quality, and this quality is best shown by an examination of his games.
In the very beginning, when working on his games, played over a period of 30 years, the author was faced with the question: in what order should the games be placed? It is possible to put the games in chronological order - this shows the development of the chessplayer and his sporting features. After long meditation, the author chose another order of presenting the games - by themes. In the basic classification of his games the author adopted approximately the same method as he used in his book The Chess Legacy of A.A.Alekhine. This, in our view, increases the value of the book, since besides the cognitive significance it furthermore assumes the character of an original text book on the middlegame, opening and endgame.
Of course, a collection of the games of a certain chessplayer cannot embrace all departments of chess theory, therefore some matters will be omitted. However, the most important departments of chess theory are looked at in the book, and in the annotations the reader will find directions as to how the "laboratory of a chessplayer" works - how his brain, trained in the game, engages itself in the analysis of chess positions.
Limitations of space required the author to be brief and concise, both in the annotations and in the introductory articles. Nevertheless the author hopes that the games given below will help the reader to understand chess and furthermore develop the ability to get to know the particulars of its complicated laws.